With post-Fordism and with the development and integration of network technology into virtually all spheres of life, technology discourse has come to legitimate a new social regime that responds to the humanist critique of capitalism, while it downplays the social critique. Network technology (primarily the Internet), the lean and decentralized corporation, and flexible modes of employment and production are all conceived in the discourse on network technology during post-Fordism (i.e., the digital discourse) as technologies that respond to concerns put forth by the humanist critique, such as individual empowerment, authenticity, and creativity—that is, those geared toward mitigating alienation.
The ramifications of these transformations go beyond the relatively limited scope of a technological sphere, or even that of capitalism. Rather, they should be understood within the wider scope of the constellation of power and the political culture of the post–World War years of Western capitalist societies. While the discourse on industrial technology during Fordism was used to legitimize the social compact between capital, labor, and the state, the discourse on network technology during post-Fordism legitimizes precisely the decomposition of this compact and the constitution of its alternative: privatized relations within the context of a global market and civil society. The two political cultures of Fordism and post-Fordism should also be distinguished by the very different political significance they assign to technology in society. While Fordism extolled the power of technology in the name of social equality and stability as a public and political project, post-Fordism extols the power of technology in the name of individual authenticity and liberation as a private and apolitical (or postpolitical) enterprise.
The articulation and substantiation of these arguments is the task of this book. Part I lays out in further detail the theoretical, sociological, and empirical foundations. Chapter 1 locates the transformations in technology discourse within the contours of the legitimation of capitalism in general and lays out the theoretical foundations for the study of technology discourse as a legitimation discourse. It then presents the main transformations in capitalism in the last few decades along two lines: a shift in the mode of accumulation from the Fordist phase of capitalism to its flexible, post-Fordist phase and a shift in the mode of regulation encompassing a new constellation of power between three central social actors: labor, capital, and the state. The chapter concludes by tying the arguments together around the notion of the “spirit of networks,” which characterizes our contemporary brand of techno-capitalism.
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age